At a crucial point in Generous Justice, Tim Keller asks us to "imagine a sequel to the Good Samaritan parable": "The months go by and every time he makes his trip from Jerusalem to Jericho he finds another man in the road, beaten and robbed. Finally the Samaritan says, 'How do we stop the violence?' The answer to that question would be some kind of social reform" (126). Keller proceeds to argue for doing justice by changing social arrangements and institutions, going beyond "just helping individuals." He rejects as naive those Christians who prefer to focus only on evangelism and individual social work. Keller's vision for social justice’here and through- out the book’is compelling. The problem is, however, that there is no sequel to the parable in the text, so all we can do is imagine this scenario. At several points in my reading of this book I wondered if the author was filling in gaps in Scripture where we simply do not have the specific mandates that he recommends.
There is much in Generous Justice to commend, especially the connection between justification and justice, the gospel and neighbor-love. However, this hypothetical sequel to the Good Samaritan parable concretely illustrates a central difficulty with Keller's argument, namely, that there is no direct New Testament command obliging the church as an institution to bring about social justice. Of course, Scripture addresses the whole range of life, issuing commands and promises that touch on the value of life, stewardship of creation, racism, and other forms of injustice. Surely, Christians are called to be salt and light in the world. But does the church take up secular callings? The church is obligated to speak where God has spoken, even to the point of disciplining offending members. But does the church have any mandate to discipline society at large? Keller's solution to this problem is to develop an indirect obligation. Thus he finds the imperatives and model for social justice in Old Testament Israel, identifies Christ's affirmation of that model in his fulfillment of it, and mandates that expansive obligation for believers today via the general requirements of neighbor-love.
Keller wonderfully presses this obligation to live justly and seek greater justice in society. Further, he presents a formally sound argument for the unobjectionable proposition that social justice is good, and God favors its flowering in the world. But is the argument this simple? God favors many creational "goods" without requiring their direct support and promotion by the church as an institution. At times, then, it seems unclear to me whether he is confusing new covenant norms with those of the old covenant theocracy.
One important consideration concerns the binding of consciences where Scripture is silent. Exegetically, there are instances where there is no good and necessary inference to be drawn from the biblical text to application. Note, for instance, that Keller's hesitancy regarding individual social work is drawn from the imagined Good Samaritan sequel, despite the fact that individual social work is precisely the kind of justice that is explicitly modeled by the parable that Jesus actually related. Such is the ambiguity when going beyond the explicit teaching of the Bible, a logic that may perhaps go hand-in-hand with an eschatology of "optimism" about human nature and institutions. In the end, it is striking that neither Jesus nor his apostles saw fit to command social reform to prevent roadside attacks, nor did they lay out the principles for developing such policies; instead they returned again and again to the simple command of neighbor-love, including specific demands for life particularly within the new society of the church.
Given the flow of Keller's argument from Old Testament to New, the central difficulty of this book is an assumed relationship between geopolitical Israel and the church. This relationship isn't explicitly articulated or defended. I'd like to focus this review on that question’one of many raised by this book.
Keller's motivation for writing the book is clear. He is writing against what he characterizes as a fundamentalist or traditional evangelical vision of Christianity that is narrowly concerned with the saving of souls. He believes this type of Christianity misrepresents the gospel of free grace as unnecessary, irrelevant, or even antithetical to good works. Keller therefore wants to reestablish the connection between the gospel and action, faith and works. Taken this far, Keller's argument is strong. Faith without works is dead. I welcome his condemnation of an individualistic, evangelism-centric Christianity that fails to reflect God's love for this world and the whole person.
Where I find Keller's argument less convincing concerns the nature of the action that the gospel calls forth. What works are required, toward whom, and on what scale? The gospel action that Keller wants to argue for is justice on a societal and cultural scale’an extension, seemingly, of his reaction against the individualism of much of evangelicalism. Thus just as "Israel was charged to create a culture of social justice for the poor and vulnerable" in order to "reveal God's glory and character to the world," so Christians are called to work for social justice.
This is where I wondered if the church in the new covenant era was being too closely identified with the old covenant theocracy. What is the difference, if any, between pursuing justice as an Old Testament citizen of the typological, sociocultural, and theocratic entity that was Israel, or as a member of the society of the Christian church, a fellowship that exists scattered like salt and light among the nations of the world? If Israel was to create a culture of social justice to reveal God's glory, are we called to create such a culture within the church or in the broader community in which we live?
Focusing perhaps too much on the civil laws of the old covenant, as if they were still in effect in the new covenant era, the book gives too little attention in my view to Jesus' explicit "new commandment" for his followers to "love one another as he has loved them" (John 15:12-17; 1 John 2:7-10; 3:11-24). Jesus even says that it is by this special love that his followers will be known in the world. How does this command relate to Israel's calling to manifest God's justice societally?
This raises the question of the priority of the church's concern to love and show justice for those in her own midst. Such priority does not deny that neighbor-love requires justice for everyone, believer and unbeliever alike. Rather the question is, what is commanded? And what are the different obligations that Christians have, both to one another in the family of God and to neighbors made in God's image?
Keller applies Israel's requirement to love the stranger and foreigner within her midst to this question. This is not exactly to the point, however, for the people of God were extensive with the nation and the land under the old covenant. The direct New Testament analogue to such a stranger might be someone in need who walks through our church doors on Sunday, or otherwise seeks shelter in the precincts of the church. For New Testament texts, Keller draws primarily on Galatians 6:10 ("As we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith"), a text that in granting the universality of the claims of justice simultaneously urges the priority of justice within the church.
The key text for the church's mission to the broader world is the parable of the Good Samaritan. There is no denying its force, which has already been granted. But the point of the parable’and parables are notoriously poor places to look to in order to develop doctrine’is decidedly narrower than social justice. It is to unmask the hypocrisy and self-righteousness of the lawyer who asked the question, and of the Jewish audience.
The question arises again, why no sequel to the Good Samaritan? Why is the complexity of civil law and an expansive societal roadmap in Israel replaced with a simple, unitary command to love another? Why is the life of this New Testament society focused so rigorously on the love of God that takes place in worship?
The major concern I have with Keller's proposal is that it seems to reintroduce Old Testament complexity in the place of New Testament simplicity. The author refreshingly acknowledges the complexity of societal challenges, noting how biblical visions of justice do not neatly fall within the lines of conservative or liberal ideologies. He urges us to exercise balance. The specific details are given in the endnotes, where we learn that "one way that many Christians seek to do justice in their daily life…is by paying attention to the sources of the products they consume…. Christians who want to support justice in the world may wish to patronize some companies over others. I would add that this whole area is fraught with difficult questions….Some Christian thinkers are far more positive about the morality of free markets than others" (note 96). The result is as clear as mud for the layperson seeking pastoral guidance. Is the obligation to do justice an imperative or not? Should I or may I buy Nike or Reebok? May we bind consciences with so many "mays"?
Another example of the difficulty and complexity of applying Old Testament principles to the Christian is found in the discussion of gleaning. The law of gleaning required landowners not to harvest to the very edge of their fields, thus leaving some of their grain behind for the poor to harvest. The author doesn't apply these laws directly to common societies today, but he does see principles here for business owners today’namely, that they should not squeeze every penny of profit out of their labor by charging the highest fees the market will bear, nor by paying the lowest wages to their workers. He also sees principles for government action’namely, that they develop welfare programs that "encourage work and self-sufficiency rather than dependency."
But these market-based applications are not a clear application of the Old Testament principle. First, one must distinguish between a subsistence-based agricultural society and a market economy. Further, Israel was a closed system in which both landowners and gleaners had obligations under the law. The same can't be said for employees and customers today. Nor does it account for the competition of a marketplace, in which competing businesses not bound by this law could easily bankrupt a firm that felt bound to charge less than the market rate for a product or service.
This is not to deny that the law of gleaning has contemporary application’it most certainly does. But the central question is where and how we are to apply those principles. Perhaps they are to be applied to our neighbor-love in the life of the local church, which would look very different from the business ethics with which Keller provides us. This is the argument Keller fails to make; he mostly assumes the validity of the Old Testament vision of social justice for the church today.
What if the lesson of Israel is primarily a negative one, her example one not to be followed? Is it then a story about not only the nature of sin in general and our inability to fulfill the law, as Paul argues in Galatians, but also about the promise of eradicating the roots of sin through social justice here on earth? What if Israel was a parable not only about our need for a Savior, but also to show us that the principles of divine justice’not to mention self-sacrificial love’cannot be faithfully manifested on a societal level in a fallen world? Rather, only a heavenly kingdom, wrought whole cloth on earth by the Spirit of God, can bear witness to the justice and glory of our heavenly King. Jesus' ministry to the poor and suffering as the true Israelite is then the capstone that fulfilled Israel's calling on earth and enabled him to pronounce a new, simpler command: Love one another.
This vision of a heavenly society manifested in the church, transformed by love, answers the call for a gospel-driven, activist Christian faith’a faith that cares for the whole person and affirms God's creation. It has the further advantage of being abundantly supported by the clear mandate of the New Testament.
